On Stress Responses, Hitting the Brakes and Losing a Hundred

They say bad luck comes in three. You’ll see.

First bad luck. Being stuck in a scientific forum on stress responses about plants. Not that it’s really unimportant; of course I knew that the plants get stressed too because of environmental conditions! Yep, I understood that kind of mechanism anyway, at least, the general idea. But delving deep on the how and the why of it is really excruciating for my un-scientific brain, encountering weird words like ‘regulomes’ ‘arabidopsis’ RAV1’, ‘protein chaperon’ or ‘irreversible hydro-churva’ I am more preoccupied with the smell of coffee and the sound of biscuit wrappers. You can’t blame me, I haven’t eaten my lunch – it’s a straight Khareen-you-have-to-listen experience from 10:00 am to 3:30 pm. Plus, other people are nodding, and it made me feel like I am really an idiot. But I have no choice though, I need to come up with a paper about it and pass it to Mr. Professor for next week. Considering that I didn’t pass his first exam, need I say I have to comply this requirement? Uh huh.

The bright side: the coffee.

Bad trip: I don’t know what to write about it.

Second bad luck. Losing a hundred, when you don’t have any money anymore can be really dangerous. And that is supposed to be my transpo fare back home, but i-don’t-know-what-the-fu—-hell happened but it just dematerialized out of my pocket. For a moment, I was like really pissed off. Lucky I’m the photocopy girl – hmmm… I can use the money-which-is-supposed-to-be-for-our-photocopies for the meantime and find a way to nick money out of my -

The bright side: I’m the photocopy girl!

Bad trip: I’m still the photocopy girl.

This is the second time that I’m in the jeepney and a vehicle bumps into us from behind. The first time, I was with Maureen in the front seat. I still could feel the creeps whenever I think about it. It gave me the jelly-like legs (which is supposed to be felt only when your crush had just passed you by). The second time I was with Darsi and Jet - off to Badminton World for our badminton match. And then, the jeep came into a halt all of a sudden (I felt it right there!) and then something bumped into us – God knows who’s the driver – looked like a rich guy – and I felt like hugging the person on my right (who is a female first year BAE stud). Now, I am worrying. Because my friends say that I will die the third time around. Creeps. But they are just scaring the hell out of me.

The bright side: The screeching sound of a brake – amazing.

Bad trip: That may be the last time I’ll hear that. Ha-ha!

Flash Fiction: Squeezed

The flash fiction that I made in my CW101 class is entitled Squeezed.  We derived the plotline and the character sketch for the story from other classmates, through draw lots.  I find it hard at first, thinking how to form and develop the plot as our own story, but in the end, I finally managed to get into the mind of my chosen character sketch, and what is this person intending to do with her plotline.  This is like a test of emphathy - trying to relate myself to someone else’s idea. 

It is written in the first person point of view, that is the view of the father.  This character is being squeezed with his internal struggle and the complicated situation that he is in.

I wrote this story based from what I noticed around me.  A significant scene in the story is when the main character’s daughter went to Manila to process her visa.  I think that that scene alone represents the country’s socio-economic situation - people nowadays are trying to get out of the country because life here is really hard.  That is true, most especially for the majority of the people here.

The typical Filipino family - their tradition, their culture and how their conventional ways are changed is also exemplified in the story, I think.  I tried to incorporate these observations in the father’s point of view.

Where did the whole idea came from?  Initially, (because of the draw-lots-thing), it came from my chosen character sketch, which was from my classmate.  But I found out that it is actually relative - especially with this kind of plot - to all people.  Somehow, I managed to make her idea as my own too. 

Lastly, I believe that the social structures and systems that you are in, the culture, the situation, act like a mirror that reflects a meaningful concept of the self, as I was trying to do to my story.